How To Do A Technical SEO Audit (Step-by-Step Guide)

Want to boost your website’s SEO and improve its ranking on search engines? It all starts with a solid technical SEO audit. But how to do a technical SEO audit effectively?

Don’t worry – we’ve got you covered. In this step-by-step guide, we’ll walk you through the essential steps, from identifying crawl errors to fixing broken links and improving your site’s Core Web Vitals. You’ll also learn how to fix common technical SEO issues that can be holding your site back.

By the end of this post, you’ll have a clear understanding of how to perform a technical SEO audit and optimize your website for better visibility and performance. Let’s dive in and get your website working at its best!

How To Do A Technical SEO Audit?

Step 1: Check for Crawl Errors in Google Search Console

The first step in any technical SEO audit is to make sure that Google can crawl your website properly. Crawl errors indicate that search engine bots are having trouble accessing certain pages on your site, which can negatively affect your rankings and indexing.

To check for crawl errors:

1. Log in to Google Search Console.
2. Navigate to the Coverage section, where you can see any crawl errors Google has encountered while trying to index your site.
3. Pay attention to the errors, such as 404 pages, server errors, or issues with blocked resources.
4. Address any issues by fixing broken links, redirecting URLs, or resolving server problems.

By identifying and resolving crawl errors, you ensure that Google can efficiently access and index all the important pages of your site, helping you improve your visibility in search results.

Step 2: Identify Indexation Issues

The second step of the technical SEO audit is to check if there are any indexation issues. Indexation issues occur when search engines fail to index certain pages on your website, meaning those pages won’t show up in search results. You want to ensure that all your important pages are being indexed, while any duplicate or low-value pages are excluded.

To check for indexation issues:

1. Perform a site search by typing site:yourdomain.com into Google’s search bar. This will show you all the pages Google has indexed from your site.
2. Review the list to ensure that all important pages are indexed and showing up in the results.
3. If you notice pages that should be indexed but aren’t, check the robots.txt file and any noindex tags to make sure those pages aren’t being blocked.
4. For any unwanted pages (like duplicates), use the noindex tag to prevent them from being indexed.

By ensuring an indexation of your important pages and an exclusion of any unnecessary pages, you can improve your site’s visibility and focus your SEO efforts on pages that matter most.

Step 3: Diagnose Broken Links & 404 Errors

Broken links and 404 errors (pages that no longer exist) not only create a poor user experience but can also hurt your SEO. Search engines don’t like broken links because they prevent crawlers from properly navigating your site and finding all of your content.

To identify broken links and 404 errors:

1. Use tools like Screaming Frog or Ahrefs to crawl your site and find broken links.
2. Check for any 404 errors—these are pages that no longer exist or have been moved.
3. For each broken link, either:
   • Fix the URL if the page still exists (e.g., updating a link to a new URL).
   • Set up a 301 redirect to guide users and search engines to the correct page.
   • Remove the link if the page no longer exists and you have no replacement.

By fixing or redirecting broken links and 404 errors, you improve both the user experience and search engine crawlability, helping to preserve your rankings.

Step 4: Evaluate Core Web Vitals Performance

Google’s Core Web Vitals are a set of user experience metrics that focus on page speed, responsiveness, and visual stability. These metrics directly impact your SEO, as Google uses them to assess the quality of the user experience on your site.

To evaluate Core Web Vitals:

1. Use Google PageSpeed Insights or Lighthouse to check your site’s performance against Core Web Vitals.
2. Focus on the following key metrics:
   • Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): Measures how long it takes for the largest visible element on the page to load (ideally under 2.5 seconds).
   • First Input Delay (FID): Measures how quickly a page responds to user interactions (ideally under 100 milliseconds).
   • Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): Measures visual stability by tracking unexpected shifts in page layout (ideally under 0.1).
3. If your site’s Core Web Vitals are below the recommended thresholds, take action to optimize:
   • Compress images to improve LCP.
   • Minimize JavaScript for faster FID.
   • Optimize fonts and prevent layout shifts to improve CLS.

Improving your Core Web Vitals can enhance the user experience on your site and boost your rankings, especially after Google made these metrics a ranking factor.

Step 5: Review Mobile Usability

With more users browsing on mobile devices than ever before, mobile usability is a critical part of technical SEO. Google now uses mobile-first indexing, meaning it prioritizes the mobile version of your site for ranking purposes.

To review mobile usability:

1. Use Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test tool to check how your site performs on mobile devices.
2. Review your site’s mobile version for issues like:
   • Slow loading times on mobile devices
   • Text too small to read or content that’s difficult to navigate
   • Buttons and links too close together
3. Implement responsive design and make sure your mobile site provides a seamless experience.

By ensuring your site is fully optimized for mobile, you improve both the user experience and your rankings in mobile search results.

Step 6: Check for HTTPS & Website Security Issues

Google considers HTTPS a ranking factor, and a secure website is essential for user trust. If your site is still running on HTTP, you should switch to HTTPS to protect user data and improve your SEO.

To check for HTTPS issues:

1. Use Google Search Console or an online tool like SSL Labs to check if your site uses HTTPS and verify the proper installation of the SSL certificate.
2. Ensure that all pages on your site are using HTTPS (not just the homepage).
3. Check for any mixed content issues (where some content is loaded over HTTP) and resolve them by making sure all content is loaded over HTTPS.

Switching to HTTPS not only boosts your rankings but also secures your visitors’ data, making them more likely to trust your website.

Key Takeaways from the Step-by-Step Technical SEO Audit Guide

A technical SEO audit is a crucial part of maintaining and improving your site’s performance. By regularly auditing your site and addressing issues like crawl errors, indexation problems, broken links, Core Web Vitals, mobile usability, and HTTPS security, you ensure that your site is optimized for both users and search engines.

Here’s a quick summary of the steps we covered:

1. Check for crawl errors in Google Search Console.
2. Identify indexation issues and ensure important pages are indexed.
3. Diagnose broken links and 404 errors to improve crawlability.
4. Evaluate Core Web Vitals performance for a better user experience.
5. Review mobile usability and ensure your site is mobile-friendly.
6. Check for HTTPS and website security issues to protect users and boost SEO.

Now that you’ve completed a comprehensive technical SEO audit, you’ll be able to fix any issues that could negatively impact your rankings. In the next chapter, we’ll look at some common technical SEO issues and how to fix them, so you can stay ahead of the game and maintain a strong SEO foundation.

This chapter is designed to be clear, informative, and actionable, ensuring that readers can follow the audit steps easily and apply them to their websites for better performance and rankings. The content is optimized for SEO and written in a conversational yet informative tone.

Technical SEO Audit: How To Fix Common Technical SEO Issues?

When it comes to technical SEO, many websites encounter recurring issues that can Impact their search engine rankings. These issues can range from simple errors to more complex problems. The good news is that most of them can be fixed with a little effort and the right tools.

In this chapter, we’ll explore some of the most common technical SEO issues websites face and provide practical solutions for fixing them. By addressing these problems, you can Guarantee a full optimization of your website for search engines and offers a seamless experience to your users.

1. Duplicate Content & Canonicalization Issues

Duplicate content refers to content that appears in multiple places on the web, which confuses search engines and can hurt your rankings. When search engines encounter duplicate content, they may not know which version of the page to rank, diluting the SEO value of all the pages involved.

To fix duplicate content:

1. Use canonical tags: The <link rel="canonical"> tag tells search engines which version of a page is the “preferred” or “canonical” version. This helps consolidate ranking signals and avoid penalties.
2. 301 redirects: If a page has been moved or is redundant, set up a 301 redirect to point to the relevant page. This ensures users and search engines are sent to the correct URL.
3. Avoid duplicate meta tags: Ensure each page has unique meta descriptions and title tags that clearly define the content of that page.

By implementing canonical tags and redirects, you can resolve duplicate content issues and ensure that search engines properly index and rank your most valuable pages.

2. Slow Website Speed

Website speed is not just a user experience issue—it’s a direct ranking factor. Slow websites lead to higher bounce rates and poorer engagement, which can negatively impact your SEO. Google’s Core Web Vitals have made page speed an even more crucial factor for rankings.

To improve website speed:

1. Optimize images: Large image files are often a major contributor to slow loading times. Use image compression tools like TinyPNG or ImageOptim to reduce file sizes without sacrificing quality.
2. Enable browser caching: Browser caching allows users to store parts of your website locally so that they don’t have to reload the entire site on each visit. This reduces load times for repeat visitors.
3. Minify CSS, JavaScript, and HTML: Reducing unnecessary characters, spaces, and comments in your code can help your website load faster.
4. Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN): CDNs distribute your website’s content across multiple servers around the world, making it faster for users to access your site from different locations.

By optimizing images, enabling caching, minifying code, and leveraging a CDN, you can significantly improve your website’s loading time and overall performance.

3. Mobile Usability Errors

With mobile-first indexing now the default for Google, mobile usability is crucial for SEO. If your website isn’t optimized for mobile devices, you risk losing potential visitors and hurting your rankings.

To fix mobile usability errors:

1. Responsive design: Ensure your website uses a responsive design, which means it adapts to different screen sizes automatically. This ensures a seamless experience across desktop, tablet, and mobile devices.
2. Test mobile usability: Use Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test tool to identify issues such as text being too small or buttons being too close together.
3. Fix touch elements: Make sure that buttons and links are large enough to be easily clicked on mobile devices. This enhances user experience and prevents frustration.
4. Prioritize content: On mobile, it’s essential to prioritize content that users are most likely to want. Avoid clutter and ensure that important content loads first.

By addressing mobile usability issues, you not only improve the user experience for mobile visitors but also signal to Google that your site is optimized for mobile, which can help improve rankings.

4. Missing Alt Text & Image Optimization

Images are an important part of website content. However, without proper optimization, they can also slow down your site and affect SEO. Alt text (alternative text) is used by search engines to understand the content of images, making it an important aspect of technical SEO.

To fix missing alt text and optimize images:

1. Add alt text to all images: Ensure that each image on your site includes descriptive, keyword-rich alt text. This helps search engines understand what the image is about and improves accessibility for users with visual impairments.
2. Optimize image sizes: As mentioned earlier, large image files can slow down your website. Use image compression and modern formats like WebP to reduce file sizes without losing quality.
3. Use descriptive file names: Name your image files with relevant, descriptive keywords. For example, instead of “image123.jpg,” use “blue-widget-product.jpg.”

By adding alt text and optimizing images, you enhance both your site’s SEO and user experience. This can lead to higher rankings in search results, especially in image search.

5. Broken Links & 404 Errors

Broken links (also known as dead links) and 404 errors can harm your SEO efforts by creating a poor user experience. When visitors click on broken links or encounter 404 error pages, they’re often frustrated and leave the site. This can lead to increased bounce rates and a drop in rankings.

To fix broken links and 404 errors:

1. Identify broken links: Use tools like Screaming Frog or Ahrefs to crawl your site and find broken links.
2. Set up 301 redirects: For any deleted or moved pages, implement 301 redirects to automatically send visitors to the correct page. This also helps preserve link equity.
3. Fix internal links: Ensure that internal links on your site are accurate and point to valid, live pages.
4. Custom 404 page: If a 404 error page is inevitable, make sure it’s user-friendly and provides options for users to navigate to other parts of your site.

By regularly monitoring for broken links and fixing 404 errors, you maintain a smooth user experience and ensure that search engines can crawl and index your site effectively.

6. Incorrect Redirects (301, 302, 307)

Redirects are essential for guiding users and search engines from old URLs to new ones, but not all redirects are created equal. Incorrect use of redirects, especially 302 (temporary) redirects when you should use 301 (permanent) redirects, can harm your SEO.

To fix redirect issues:

1. Use 301 redirects: Always use 301 redirects when moving a page permanently, as this passes on most of the SEO value (link equity) to the new page.
2. Avoid redirect chains: Redirect chains occur when multiple redirects point to each other. This can slow down your site and waste crawl budget. Make sure redirects go directly to the final destination page.
3. Check redirect loops: A redirect loop happens when one page redirects to another, which then redirects back to the original page. This causes an infinite loop that prevents proper indexing. Regularly check for and fix redirect loops.

By using redirects correctly and avoiding chains or loops, you ensure that link equity is preserved and search engines can easily crawl your site.

Conclusion

Addressing common technical SEO issues is key to guarantee the optimization of your website for search engines and users alike. By fixing problems such as duplicate content, slow site speed, mobile usability errors, broken links, and incorrect redirects, you can improve both your rankings and the user experience.

Here’s a summary of the issues and fixes we covered:

1. Duplicate content & canonicalization: Use canonical tags and 301 redirects.
2. Slow website speed: Optimize images, minify code, and use a CDN.
3. Mobile usability errors: Implement responsive design and fix touch elements.
4. Missing alt text & image optimization: Add alt text and optimize image sizes.
5. Broken links & 404 errors: Identify broken links, set up redirects, and fix internal links.
6. Incorrect redirects: Use 301 redirects correctly and avoid redirect chains.

Fixing these common technical SEO issues ensures your site is performing optimally and ready to rank higher in search results. In the next chapter, we’ll dive into technical SEO for WordPress, Shopify, and e-commerce sites, offering insights and strategies to improve SEO performance for these popular platforms.

Ready to Boost Your Website’s SEO?

A thorough Technical SEO Audit can help identify and fix issues that impact your site’s performance and rankings. Don’t let technical issues hold you back! Contact us today and our team of experts will help optimize your site for better search engine results and user experience.